The Brier is the best supported curling competition in terms of paid attendance, attracting crowds far larger than even those for World Championships held in Canada.

[citation needed] Its current main sponsor is Montana's, a Canadian restaurant chain.

The visits were deemed popular enough for Macdonald Tobacco to move forward with sponsorship of a full national championship in 1927.

Games lasted 14 ends, and each team played each other in a 7-game round robin with no playoffs unless there was a tie for first.

The first Brier champion was Nova Scotia, a rink skipped by Murray Macneill, with teammates Al MacInnes, Cliff Torey and Jim Donahue – who were normally skips in their own right, but were added to the Macneill rink because the rest of his normal team could not make the trip.

Games had to be played in their entirety until the 1974 Brier, when the rules were changed to the present standard of allowing a team to concede defeat before the end of the match if they wished.

In 1946, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) began covering the event live across the country on the radio.

By the 1960s, the CBC began showing curling on television, at first giving daily half-hour reports.

In 1973, CBC began regularly showing live coverage of the final draw of the event.

In 2013, Sportsnet and City began to offer coverage of the finals of the provincial playdowns in Manitoba, Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia as well.

At the same time, the World Curling Tour made the sport more lucrative, and curlers demanded cash prizes at the Brier, and the ability to display their sponsors on their jerseys.

Today, member associations typically grant past champions and other strong teams automatic entry to the latter stage(s) of the playdowns.

However, beginning in 2014, following the precedent set by its women's counterpart, the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, champions now earn a bye representing Canada during the following year's Brier.

The four lowest-ranked regions played a pre-qualifying tournament to open the Brier, with the winner advancing to the full round-robin.

In this format's first year Nunavut declined to send a team, and the round was between the winners of Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and the Yukon.